The Ghost of a Smile
by Alys Blue
Summary: Gran was grasping at smoke, at oxygen, something invisible that she thought she needed just as much as she needed to breathe, but something that she could never physically attain, admire and cherish. Neville was not as naive as all that.


Neville slowly walked down the dimly lit hallway of St. Mungo's, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, his back ramrod straight, his head down, as if he were trying to avoid being recognized. His grandmother strutted forward ahead, always ahead, twitching her gaze back towards the boy every few minutes, impatiently checking to see if he was still following. He was. Always.

They made their way into the ward. It was Christmas time, and decorated as such. Gaudily gussied up in green and red, the hallways seemed far too cheery to suit Neville's mood, or personality. But Neville made no comment, not aloud, not even in his own head. His disagreement with the holiday spirit in the hospital, and with the holidays in general, was a rather subconscious thing, a primal feeling he couldn't explain, nor cared to. Neville rarely cared to delve into the deeper meaning of his psyche. He was scared to death of what he would find.

Grandmother and grandson drew closer to the curtains surrounding the beds of two of the most misunderstood, pitied, and courageous souls of the first war. Neville wished he could be anywhere but before those curtains, those hospital blue curtains, twisting his sweaty hands together as if the motion would afford him some form of comfort, comfort that his parents could no longer give him. Subconsciously, of course.

Neville's grandmother looked at him expectantly. Neville looked at his untied shoes. She clucked her tongue in annoyance and whipped back the curtains, almost excitedly, almost as if there were people behind the slick, hanging fabric, people that talked and laughed and loved, rather than silent, empty shells of flesh that stared at nothing and moved as if pulled by marionette strings. Neville wondered what kind of sick puppet master would keep up the charade of living for this long.

"Hello dearies," Gran said to no one in particular. "We've come to visit for the holidays? Isn't that lovely? Isn't your boy so grown?"

Neville shifted his feet uncomfortably. He leveled his gaze about an inch above the head of the woman who had birthed him, so as to appear to his grandmother to be looking at her. He counted the stripes in the wallpaper. The thin woman to whom he pretended to give his attention wouldn't mind. She was ignoring him as well.

"We've brought you gifts!" Gran exclaimed, using a tone of voice one usually reserved for those under the age of six.

The pale man reclining in the other bed clapped his hands together once and then fell silent, as if he had grasped desperately on to the thread of the old woman's overbearing excitement momentarily and then immediately lost it. The woman grunted, whether in recognition of the sentiment or due to indigestion, nobody knew.

Neville's grandmother shoved a wrinkled hand into her purse and withdrew two chocolate frogs and two packages of Drooble's, dumping one of each unceremoniously on the beds after an awkward moment of waiting for the patients to reach and take them from her. She had learned long ago that spending large amounts of money on her son and daughter in law only resulted in financial heartache, as the gifts either ended up destroyed or woefully unused. As it were, it would be a fine thing if one of them even opened the candy given to them, and a miracle if they had the presence of mind to actually consume the confection.

Neville remained just as silent as his parents, as if the ailments they were suffering from were something that Neville had inherited himself. Gran was grasping at smoke, at oxygen, something invisible she thought she needed just as much as she needed to eat and breathe but something she could never physically attain and hold, admire and cherish. Contrary to popular belief, Neville wasn't as naive as all that. He did not strain to build relationships, impossible or not, without pausing to realize that in his haste for construction he had unwittingly stolen someone else's life, pride, love, hate, fear, friendship, or heartache as material, as so many of us are guilty of, including his grandmother. He watched other people do this, time and time again, as he was left out of the fold of companionship. But he kept his soul about him, and in the process, caught the occasional glimpse of others'.

His grandmother turned to leave. He tore his gaze away from the wall paper, accidentally sweeping over his mother's dead stare, and he shivered as he quietly slid the curtain back around his parents' tiny corner of privacy. When he and his grandmother were a few feet away from the exit to the ward, he heard a rustling noise behind him, followed by a strangled, almost inhuman cry.

The woman who had, once upon a time, cared for Neville, had kissed away his nightmares, tucked the covers up around his chin before bed and rocked him against her chest when sleep would not come, the woman who had sacrificed her sanity so that Neville could retain his life stood barefoot beside the curtain she had violently torn from its frame. She looked bedraggled. Her short hair stuck up in all directions. Her eyes, if no longer lifeless, looked somewhat crazed, and her face held a desperation previously unseen by Neville and Gran in the woman. In her hand she clutched a thin, pink piece of paper, so tightly that her knuckles were white: the wrapping of the Drooble's gum.

She pressed the wrapper into Neville's hand with sticky fingers, her arm bent at an odd angle. Her lips seemed to be forming words, but the only noise leaving her throat was a keening, high-pitched whine. Neville hastily took it from her, holding it fiercely to his chest, close to his rapidly beating heart, like a precious gift, like an olive branch, like the only sentient apology his parents would ever manage to give him for leaving him alone in such a cruel world.

The woman gave him one more Christmas present before returning to her world of half-eaten hospital meals and drool: a smile, or the ghost of one.

Neville thought that he had never had a better Christmas.

**AN: I was inspired to write this by the scene in OOTP in which Harry sees Neville visiting his parents in St. Mungo's when he's there to see Mr. Weasley. I couldn't figure out a way to fit Harry and the rest of them in there, so I didn't. Review, pretty please with a cherry on top. And Happy Holidays. :D**


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